


Jackson Pollock, You Know?

by unrealities



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: First Meetings, Fluff, M/M, Painting, gratuitous mentions of Jackson Pollock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 19:31:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18879763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unrealities/pseuds/unrealities
Summary: Lucas does not mean to mislead the girls into thinking he is something of an artist because he most definitely is not, but apparently, mentioning an artist once validates him as their token artist and the girls volunteer him as the sole painter of the mural in the common room. So, he also does not mean to think that the girls are absolutely awful and are doing him no good, but he does not have time to think about that anyways, considering he has to paint an entire mural by himself.Alternatively, Lucas is awful at art but he does know a thing or two about Jackson Pollock.





	Jackson Pollock, You Know?

**COMMON ROOM MURAL MUST BE REPAINTED**

**SIGN UP HERE IF YOU ARE INTERESTED**

The sheet is currently empty. He wants to tell the girls that it is because no one has seen it yet, but it has been up for two full weeks and no one has expressed any interest in it whatsoever. He did try to explain to the girls that they are not exactly known to be an artistic school, and that the few artists at this school most likely have better things to do than to focus on painting a mural, like for example, school. The girls pointedly ignored him, but it’s not like he’s going to tell them that he told them so or anything.

“Repainting the mural is a _must_!” Daphné exclaims. She continues on about how her new common room vision includes a better mural that does not exude whatever chaotic energy the current mural is letting out.

“Worst comes to worse, we can always do it ourselves,” Alexia suggests, but even she seems hesitant in offering themselves up for painting the mural.

“We’re unoriginal,” Emma says.

“Also, we’re not artists,” Imane adds on.

“I’ve kind of painted before,” Manon chimes in. The girls look at her intently, pressing her to continue on. “Well, I painted a ceramic mug once.”

Emma scrunches up her face. “You mean that God-awful mug that no one at your apartment ever uses because the design on it is offending to the eye?”

Manon looks like she wants to be hurt, but she huffs and concedes. “It’s awful, I know, but girls, I don’t know what else we can do if we can’t find at least one person interested in painting this.”

“I mean, maybe Alexia is right,” Lucas finally says, “it might not turn out great, but we can always just do it on our own. I mean, we’ve all been to an art museum before, right? We can take inspiration from paintings we’ve seen? Look up murals online?”

“Oh, yes!” Alexia exclaims. “What’s that one artist? Oh, da Vinci! We can take inspiration from da Vinci!”

The girls groan in unison.

“None of us are exactly up to da Vinci’s level, girl,” Emma says. “And that’s seriously the only artist you can think of? Everyone knows da Vinci.”

They’re all pouting now, save for Lucas who is, for the most part, quietly observing and assessing the current predicament they are in. He wonders what he should say to get their morale up. He wants to say that Daphné is focusing way too much energy on the mural when other parts of the common room can be revised to meet her standards, but he knows that will only make her upset.

“You could always Jackson Pollock it.”

The girls look at him with a mixture of surprise and awe. 

“Jackson Pollock?” Emma asks slowly, tilting her head in confusion.

“Yeah, he was the guy who, like, I don’t know,” Lucas pauses, cursing himself for mentioning the first artist that popped into his head. “He was the one who splattered paint on a canvas and called it art?”

It’s definitely a lackluster description of Jackson Pollock and his art, but he decides to go with it since the girls seem to be impressed by what he just said – except for Imane who just rolls her eyes but does not say anything, maybe because she also does not know how to explain Jackson Pollock’s art style, or more likely, does not want to be dragged into the mess Lucas made for himself.

“Then it’s decided!” Daphné says, clapping her hands together with a finality that frightened Lucas.

What exactly did she mean by that?

“Lucas is doing the mural!”

Before Lucas can object, Daphné runs into him with her whole body, throwing her arms around his neck and squeezing tightly. She rambles on about how important the mural is to her and that she knows that Lucas will do well on it because he definitely knows what he’s talking about, what with him knowing about Jackson Pollock and all!

Then, she runs out of the common room.

Lucas stands speechless, the center of attention in the common room as the remaining girls try to refrain from laughing.

“All of you are helping me,” Lucas says. He wants it to sound commanding, but it comes off more as begging and pleading for the girls not to leave him alone in this.

The girls laugh at him, followed by a chorus of, “No way!”

“Like you said, Google inspiration!” Emma says. The girls hum and nod their heads, but it’s all condescending in the end.

“I am not painting the mural by myself!” Lucas says, stomping his foot on the ground. He feels like a child, but he wants to make it known that there is no way he can paint a mural by himself let alone a good mural – and even then “good” is a stretch, maybe just presentable at best.

“Well, who else is going to do it?” Alexia asks innocently.

The girls go into another round of laughter.

“You’re all awful.”

The girls look at him with some guilt in their expression, but Alexia does not help their case when she splutters into laughter once more. The girls all elbow Alexia but do a horrible job of keeping their own faces straight.

Manon announces that they should leave. Lucas protests but the girls quickly gather their things and head out the common room door.

“By the way,” Manon says at the door, pursing her lips together to keep back laughter, “Daphné expects the common room to be done by the end of the month.”

The end of the month is a little over one week from now.

“I hate you all.”

Manon blows a kiss from the doorway before pulling Emma out into the hallway alongside her. Imane and Alexia give each other a high-five, then pretend to look sorrowful toward Lucas before bursting into laughter once more as they stumble out of the common room.

Lucas looks at the wall where the new mural should be. It makes him uncomfortable just how much the current mural seems to be screaming at him. Daphné is definitely right about the mural in that respect, it truly is disruptive. He wonders if a Jackson Pollock-inspired mural would make it any less disruptive, but he decides that he will throw caution to the wind for this project considering the girls just left him to his own devices to create a mural for the first time in his life.

________

At least Google is here to help him.

Apparently, he has to clean and prime the wall before he can start repainting the mural. He wonders if the finished product would be that heavily affected if he skipped these two steps. The website he is currently on urges that priming is crucial, especially in trying to cover something that is already there. 

He asks the group chat if there is enough money in the budget to buy paint primer and supplies to clean the wall. Daphné chimes in with a quick “Nope!” and then continues to tell him to just use the paints that are in the art supply room.

The supply room has six paint cans, in which three of them are white, and he finds several paint brushes, all of which he cannot tell the difference between. He remembers that the website also tells him to cover any spaces or areas that he does not want to paint, to assure that no paint will get on surfaces that are supposed to be paint-free. So, he grabs blue tape and a few tarps from the supply room as well.

When he finishes bringing all the supplies into the common room, he already feels exhausted.

It is four in the afternoon on a Friday. The school is nearly empty. He knows that the girls are not at school, at least, since they have decided to go shopping together after school.

At the beginning of the week, the girls apologized for leaving him in the dust to paint the mural by himself. Manon and Imane offered to help, but then Manon ended up catching some sort of flu and Imane had to go out of the city to help her mom for a work event. Alexia had a dance audition to rehearse for and Emma said that her parents want to sit down with her and have a conversation, which was enough to terrify her to the days leading up to that dinner on Friday.

So, the universe has once again inevitably left Lucas to his own devices.

At least the girls helped move the furniture to the sides of the room before leaving for the day. That only left Lucas to tarp the floor and do the entire mural.

He takes a few steps back after he finishes taping the tarp to the floor. The current mural is kind of awful, now that he really looks at it. It isn’t only loud but just not a great mural to begin with, so he supposes that it is a good thing that Daphné wanted it gone, but he really wishes that it was not him bearing the responsibility of clearing it from the common room.

He takes his phone out of his pocket to send a quick text to the group chat, telling the girls how he will exact revenge on them in some way for making him do this, to which they all responded with a series of heart emojis.

Then, for safe measure, he tells Manon to feel better, Imane that she will do great at her mom’s presentation, Alexia that she will kill her audition, and Emma to pray for a decent ending to her night with her parents.

They respond with hearts once more.

Lucas set his phone on a table far from the mural alongside his backpack. He feels dread conjure in his stomach as he looks at the amount of paint he will need to put on the wall for it to cover not only the current mural but the entire surface of that wall. He just wants that unsettling feeling to go away.

“What are you doing?”

Lucas looks toward the door, which he left open after trying to lug everything into the common room, to find a guy standing in the doorway with his backpack slung over one shoulder.

“Painting a mural,” Lucas huffs. He refrains from being overly cynical about it since he does not want to take out his annoyance on some random student.

“By yourself?” the guy asks, raising one eyebrow.

“Yeah.”

“That sucks.”

Thanks for the insight, Lucas wants to say, but instead, he just shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t think it’ll be that bad.” Or at least that’s the sentiment he wants to have when he starts painting.

“What are you going for?”

Lucas wishes the guy would just go away. It’s already embarrassing enough to know that he himself cannot actually paint for the life of him, but he also does not want some random student to know either.

“I’m going for something, um, Jackson Pollock inspired?” Lucas says, but it comes off more as an amateur who knows nothing about art than someone who is remotely even semi-confident about what he is about to do their common room.

The guy stares at him, clearly unimpressed.

“He’s the guy who, you know, splattered a bunch of paint on a canvas,” Lucas continues, clearing his throat and avoiding meeting the stranger’s gaze. “Jackson Pollock, you know?”

“That’s an awful idea,” the guy says. Before Lucas can retort with how he does not need a stranger’s opinions, the guy strides into the room, leaving his backpack at the door and throwing his jacket onto the one of the tables pushed to the side. “Let’s do it.”

“What?”

The guy tilts his head and raises a questioning eyebrow at Lucas. “Well, do you really want to Jackson Pollock a mural by yourself?” he asks, making it sound as if the mere idea of “Jackson Pollock-ing” – did he really just refer to it as an adjective? – a mural by himself was ridiculous.

“Well, I mean I guess I didn’t really want to do it by myself in the first place,” Lucas admits lowly, thinking back to how the girls are all decidedly busy with their own lives at the moment.

“Ah, see!” the guy exclaims, seemingly elated at Lucas’ confession. “I knew it!”

“Do you really want to waste your Friday on this, though?” Lucas asks incredulously, staring at the cans of paint waiting to be opened.

“I don’t really think I have anything better to do,” the guy says, shrugging his shoulders. “Unless you really don’t want any help with this?”

Lucas thinks about his answer for a moment, but he only ends up staring at the guy.

The stranger is tall and he carries himself with an air of confidence that Lucas surely does not have. His hair is messy and unkempt with a few hairs lighter as if he had dyed it previously. It’s messy but in a way that gives more insight to his personality. His eyes are piercing yet kind at the same time. Lucas finds them quite expressive and cannot help but stare at them as he thinks about his decision. The stranger’s lips, though, look lovely, especially when he smiles. Lucas thinks that the smile is the embodiment of kindness. All in all, he thinks that the stranger exudes kindness, but he wonders what use he will really be in painting a mural.

“You can help,” Lucas answers after a few moments, realizing that he has been quiet for too long.

The guy smiles, the kind smile that Lucas is suddenly incredibly whipped over. He steps closer so he is standing next to Lucas. He looks around at the floor, then at the mural, then back down at the floor.

“What kind of paint is this?” the guy asks, pointing at the cans on the floor.

Lucas pauses. “Does it matter what kind of paint it is?”

By the look on the guy’s face, it does matter what kind of paint it is.

“Um, well, I can’t really help what the paint is,” Lucas says sheepishly, rubbing at the back of his neck. “We don’t have enough in the budget to get new paints and stuff, so this is all from the art supply closet.”

The guy only nods his head. He crouches down to observe the paint cans, then takes the screwdriver and pops off the lids. The room immediately fills with paint fumes and it nauseates Lucas for a moment, but the guy seems unbothered. Well, the guy seems bothered, just not by the smell. 

“Three of these are white.”

“Yeah, they’re white,” Lucas repeats, unsure of what else to say.

The guy stands up again, his hands on his hips. His face indicates that he is thinking about what to do with technically only four different color for the mural.

“I mean, does it have to really be this thought out?” Lucas asks. “I mean, it’s just a common room mural painted by students. I don’t think people are expecting a masterpiece or anything.”

The guy frowns at that, but does not reply. Instead he picks up two brushes and hands one to Lucas.

“Jackson Pollock wasn’t just a guy who splattered paint everywhere and called it art,” the guy says, echoing back to what Lucas had tried to explained earlier. “He had a method to his art. He threw the paint because it was a way of expressing emotion. It told a story. It’s called action painting because it uses the whole body. He used his whole body like he was dancing, but it was another form of art. The art was through splattering paint.”

Lucas stood still for a moment.

So, the guy is an art snob. Awesome.

But he is also pretty. He is pretty and a little bit of a snob. 

“Sorry,” Lucas says softly. “I didn’t mean to, like, offend you or anything. I just really don’t know anything about art, if you haven’t already guessed.”

“No, I’m sorry,” the guy says in return, shaking his head, “that came off a little too harsh. I just think Jackson Pollock is cool. I like that you thought of him as inspiration for the mural, even if you say you don’t know a lot about art.”

Okay, so maybe the guy is not a complete snob. Now the guy is just pretty. That’s great, too.

They stand in silence, staring at the mural. Lucas feels as if he is thinking too much into the situation, but he also feels as if the guy is pointedly avoiding staring at Lucas the same way Lucas is pointedly avoiding staring at him.

“We can start and you can tell me more about Jackson Pollock?” Lucas suggests, walking toward the paint cans. “If that’s something you want to do.”

The guy smiles, letting out a breath Lucas did not realize he was holding. “You don’t have to listen to me go on about an artist you don’t care about while we paint a mural for who knows how long?”

Lucas dips his brush in the white paint, then lifts the brush up and watches as the paint drips back into the can in a steady stream.

“I don’t mind,” Lucas insists, twirling the brush to manipulate the paint to go down in a spiral, “I should probably know more about art anyways, right? Art’s important for the soul and all that.”

Then, he flicks the brush forward, but barely any paint reaches the wall. Instead, a weak stream of paint falls flat onto the tarp. He is really glad that he remembered to put the tarp on the floor.

The guy bursts into laughter.

“Hey, it’s a lot harder than it looks!” Lucas exclaims but he cannot find himself to actually be offended. He knows he’s bad at art, but the guy’s laughter makes it difficult to be mad at anything, let alone him.

“In the most simplest terms, you’re just throwing paint at a wall,” the guy points out through laughter, shaking his head. “You’re the one who made it sound easy.”

To be honest, Lucas did think it was all about throwing paint on a wall, but he does not want to admit that he believed it would be easy to do own his own.

“You try it then!” Lucas steps back from the paint cans and gestures at the mural.

The guy steps forward, dipping his brush in the blue paint can then quickly whipping the brush upwards. The paint splatters onto the wall in a curved line in sporadic lines and dots.

Lucas wants to be upset at the guy, but it is difficult to be anything but happy  when the guy turns to Lucas with a big smile on his face as he points to the mural and says, “Easy as that!”

So, the guy is pretty and good at art, or at least good at throwing paint at a wall.

The guy gestures for Lucas to do the same, pointing at the paint cans then taking a step back. Lucas dips his brush in the paint can again, but instead of watching the paint drip back down into the can once more, he quickly maneuvers his arm so the paint brush moves in an upward motion. His paint splatter crosses the blue splatter the guy had just made, spotting and trailing off toward the top of the wall.

“That was good!” the guy exclaims, clapping his hands together. Unfortunately for the both of them, he did not realize he still had a wet paint brush in his hands and blue paint splattered onto both of their clothes. “Oh, fuck, I’m so sorry!”

Lucas looks down at his clothes, now covered in dots of blue paint. In reality, it is not a big deal since the paint is almost minute on his clothes, but he he holds back a smile before feigning anger, then using his finger to pull the hairs of his brush back and splattering the guy with white paint.

“No fair! I splattered both of us on accident, you just splattered me on purpose!”

Lucas laughs. “It’s not about being fair anymore! You splatter me in paint and I splatter you back!”

Thankfully, the guy seems to be having fun because he quickly grabs another brush and dips both of his brushes into two paint cans. He throws his entire body into his movement as the paint covers the wall, then he lightly flicks his wrist so that the remaining paint on the brush splatters onto Lucas.

Then, Lucas retaliates with the same tactic. He takes another brush and throws the paint from both brushes at the mural before turning to the guy and waving one brush over his head to sprinkle drops of paint on his head while he uses the other to smear paint across the guy’s shirt.

It goes on like this for six hours. Each time they step each other up in how creatively they get paint on the other, they feign offense before retaliating with more paint. Sometimes, they would stop to talk about school or their lives or Jackson Pollock. Lucas learns that it was rumored that Jackson Pollock had bipolar disorder, which he found strange when the guy suddenly brought it up, but he shrugged it off as an interesting fact. Then, the guy rubs his brush onto Lucas’ arm and their paint fight starts again.

A teacher walks by the common room around six at night. Lucas tells her that they will be finishing the mural tonight and that he has permission from the janitor to be in here until later in the night. When the teacher leaves, the guy asks when the janitor will stop by to lock up and Lucas says that it was a lie and they are now alone in an empty school. They resume throwing paint at each other.

At nine, Lucas notices his phone ringing. He sees that it’s Yann, but he is too late in picking it up as he tries to rub as much paint off of his hands before answering. He drags his hands along his pants and on the dry spots of the tarp before looking at his phone. He texts Yann and the girls back, saying that he is still at the school finishing the mural, but they should not worry and he will text all of them when he gets home. When he is finished on the phone, the guy asks him who it was. Lucas just says it is friends checking in on him and asks the guy if he should check in with his friends or family, but the guy only shrugs it off before resuming his work on the mural.

Eventually, the mural is covered with streams of paint that seem to be endless and abrupt at the same time. They only had four different colors but since they decided to use Jackson Pollock’s drip method – or so the guy had told him it was called at one point during the night – the other colors had mixed with each other well to create a spectrum of colors for the mural.

It’s kind of ugly.

“It’s kind of ugly,” Lucas says.

The guy laughs, nodding his head. “I guess it kind of is.” 

Lucas looks at the mural again. It seems just like a mess of lines and curves that stretch from one corner of the wall to the other and to the top of the wall to the bottom. They completely covered the previous mural and replaced it with a mixture of light and dark colors – dark colors were apparently Jackson Pollock’s thing, the guy had said to him. He remembers back to Daphné talking about how chaotic the previous one looked, and from first glance, it seems like the new mural is just as chaotic as the last, but it seems less chaotic when he thinks about the story that comes with it.

“It tells a story,” Lucas says, echoing back to what the guy had said earlier about Jackson Pollock’s painting technique.

He looks at each part of the mural, smiling as he recalls how each paint stroke comes with a story. There is a paint splatter near the left corner of the wall, where a bit of the paint had gone over to the next wall by accident. They made this accident when the guy had run into the corner to stave Lucas off during one of their paint fights, but Lucas had got to him anyways, along with one of the walls that they were not supposed to paint. There is also a horizontal stream of paint towards the bottom of the mural in a bright red color now murky from the mixture of colors, but this was when Lucas proclaimed he was tired of making upward and downward strokes and tried to make a horizontal line but instead frantically ended up getting paint on not only the wall but a few chairs, a table, and a window sill.

Then, there is a white blotch near the middle of the mural when Lucas got tired of flicking his wrist and pressed his brush right into the center. This was when they were talking about Lucas’ first year of high school. He became angry at himself with the surfacing memories of him, Yann, and Emma. He had no idea why he had mentioned it in the first place, but the guy comforted him, saying that he had done stupid things for the guy he liked, too. They stared at each other in silence after that, realizing they had just inadvertently told each other that they were both interested in guys. But then the guy continues to paint, trying to fix the blotch that Lucas had made out of frustration.

In the top, right corner, there is an overlay of red, green, and blue with a few specks of white. The guy decided to use his hand for those and threw hand-fulls of paint at that corner. This was right after the guy had told him that he was a transfer student, and that he knew that it was strange he transfered in the middle of the school year, but Lucas shrugged it off, saying that it wasn’t strange at all. And instead, pointed out that it was strange that the two of them, two strangers, had met by chance and ended up painting a mural together. The guy laughed in agreement.

There is one stream of blue and one stream of green nearly perpendicular to each other, one on the far left and the other on the right. This was both of their last additions to the mural. It was the final flick of the brush that they had simultaneously done together. It led them to where they are now, standing close to each other covered in the paint that they had splattered over each other in the process of making their creative mess.

So, yeah, their mural definitely tells a story.

“It’s a nice story,” the guy says after a long pause.

At some point throughout the night, their silences were no longer awkward but comfortable and necessary at times. Silence falls on them once more, but they are both looking at the mural with an awe. Lucas hopes the guy is contemplating in the same way the he is because he is surprised that their mural turned into actual art.

“I didn’t really think that it would be art, you know?” Lucas says, still staring at the mural.

“Anything can be art,” the guy responds, “if it has a story. Even random splatters on the wall.”

Lucas lets out a breathless laugh. “I guess so.”

In their hours of painting and talking, Lucas strangely feels like knows a lot about the stranger next to him. Not just on a basic level of knowing that he is a third year that likes art, but on a more personal level that seems to be too profound to put into words. He wants to express how odd it is how quickly they came to know each other, when it took him months and years to be comfortable around his current friends, but he stops himself from saying so, letting the silence sink further.

The guy turns away from the mural, his body now facing Lucas. Lucas feels his heart beat faster in his chest, but he remains facing the mural, only acknowledging the guy with a nod of his head. He now realizes just how tall the guy is, but he does not loom over him in an imposing way. He can feel the guy’s eyes on him, heavy with some emotion Lucas does not know how to read yet.

Yet.

“I’m Eliott, by the way.”

Right, they never even introduced themselves to each other. Lucas feels like an idiot, but instead of expressing his thoughts aloud, he simply returns the gesture.

“Lucas.”

Eliott stretches his hand out, completely covered with dried paint. “Nice to meet you, Lucas.”

Lucas laughs at the ridiculousness of it all, but still meets Eliott’s hand halfway. “And you, Eliott.”

“Say, you want to do this sometime again?”

Lucas raises his eyebrows. “What, paint a mural?”

Eliott laughs and his shakes his head, dismissing the mural next to them with a wave of his hand. “No, I meant just hanging out.”

“Oh, okay.” Of course that’s what he meant. Lucas feels a little light on his feet. “Yeah, sure.”

“Great,” Eliott says, smiling his bright smile once again. The smile makes Lucas feel warm inside and despite it not being Eliott’s first smile of the night, it feels as if it is the first of Eliott’s smile Lucas truly sees.

Eliott talks about how he should get home before midnight, but asks Lucas for his number, which Lucas immediately gives. Eliott grabs his jacket and backpack, both covered with little dots of paint from throughout the night, but he simply smiles down at them before waving goodbye to Lucas and leaving the common room.

Lucas smiles to himself.

The room is dark, barely being lit by the dying fluorescent lights above him. The moonlight, however, finds its way into the room through the large windows, giving light to the mural. When he looks to the mural, an ineffable experience of emotions rushes through him as he recalls other memories from the past few hours with Eliott.

He hears a ding on his phone and he walks over to the table it is sitting on. There is a text from Eliott.

**Unsaved number**

> [23:05] It’s Eliott.
> 
> [23:05] Just wanted to say that it’ll be hell getting paint out of my hair.
> 
> [23:06] But it was nice hanging out with you.

Lucas is not sure what to say back, not because he has nothing to say but because he has way too much to say. So instead, he saves Eliott’s number, belatedly wishing he had gotten Eliott’s photo for his contact information.

**Eliott**

> [23:09] I’m glad I met you.
> 
> [23:09] Good night.

He doesn’t try to hold back his smile as he reads the messages.

**Lucas**

> [23:10] I’m glad I met you, too.
> 
> [23:10] Good night.

So, in the end, Lucas definitely still thinks that the girls are awful for leaving him alone to paint the mural, but he also thinks that they are kind of great because now he knows Eliott.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus:
> 
> When Daphné walks into the common room first thing Monday morning, she wonders why there are so many small paint splatters all around the room. There’s a few spots on the floor next to the door, there’s a few on the window sill, there’s a bunch of little splatters on the walls where the mural is not. She shrugs it off, though, just happy that Lucas finished her mural in time. She pulls out her phone and snaps a photo of herself in front of the mural, thanking Lucas for painting such an interestingly intricate mural.
> 
>  
> 
> ao3, when i was logging in: incorrect password! you haven’t been on here in two (2) years you loser!
> 
> anyways my [tumblr](http://bakhellals.tumblr.com/) is here since i apparently never check ao3 after i’ve posted something


End file.
